For me, there have been few individuals that have captured the horror of drunkenness like this girl. An excellent choice of reading for anybody curious to know more about the reality of teenage drinking.By the age of 17, my junior year of high school, I was drinking on a fairly regular basis. It may not have been everyday, but it was becoming more common for me to seek out opportunities to get drunk on the weekends. In my opinion, there is nothing "social" about teenage drinking. It's been my experience that most teenagers drink to get buzzed. Maybe not falling down, black out drunk. But at the very least, buzzed.
My drinking was also being aggravated by the onset of a serious eating disorder. At the age of 16, in an attempt to lose weight, I had begun vomiting after meals. The weight slid off within a very short period of time. But like all addictions, it isn't easy to "just stop." The purging, and later, excessive dieting and exercise, would gain a foothold in my life that I wouldn't see an end to for another decade. Drinking fit in nicely with this lifestyle, in that I found that I could meet my caloric needs with liquor and not food; and gain a buzz while at it. Nice little bonus.
For anybody wondering why these behaviours weren't apparent to those around me, they were. Ironically, friends, not family, were the first to notice. My family was not around much in my life during those years. My mother had gone back to college when I was nine and was working on her masters degree during my high school years. She would work full time during the day and go to school at night. My father worked full time 45 minutes away. There was a lot of alone time in my home life and so it was no surprise that school officials noticed my appearance first.
I had been called in to the school nurse due to a concern over my recent weight loss. I enjoyed the attention, but on the same token I was fearful that my behaviour had been revealed and would now be closely monitored. I wasn't prepared to stop starving myself or to give up my compulsive exercising. I certainly wasn't prepared to give up my drinking. In addition to the drinking, diet pills and meth amphetamines were becoming part of the picture. These things, as well, I was not eager to give up.
Already, at the age of 17, I knew that I was in over my head. But such is the beast of addiction. I knew that this wasn't a moral issue. I could physically feel the hold that alcohol, drugs, and exercise were beginning to have on my life. It was as if a switch had been flipped in my brain. To be told I "just needed to stop" was insane. I could no sooner stop using than I could breathing. Not that there was anybody listening, but if there were, I would tell them just how wrong it felt to not use alcohol. Alcohol did for me what nothing else ever did. Human relationships, sports accomplishments, good grades...none of it compared to the release I felt after taking the first drink.
Part three in a series of posts chronicling my history with alcoholism and recovery.
Posts
